Fortunately, the job in NYC did not require much of a wardrobe change; just a little sharper than college, with heels all the time. That wasn’t a problem, since I’d already amassed a vast collection of shoes.

I shopped exclusively at Forever 21, and occasionally, very rarely, at H&M, because I thought it to be a bit pricey. Never at Zara, because everything seemed truly expensive to me. Still, I lived and dressed within my means, and I was always quite stylish by the standards in my industry.

At one point, in my second job in Manhattan, I documented my outfits every day for about two months, making it a point to never wear the same clothes twice. It was a fun experiment in narcissism; though, you would be surprised at how pumped up you are for work when you spend all that time fussing over yourself.

The following year, when I moved to San Francisco, it felt painfully like reversion. “Dressed up” meant flip-flops and hoodies. I felt like a scrub, as if I’d gone back to college, or worse, as if I were living at home again. I even couldn’t wear heels, because of the CLICK-CLICK-CLACK they made on the wooden floor of our uber cool exposed brick loft office in SoMa.

Especially as the only girl in office of eleven mid-twenties boymen, it just drew too much attention every time I moved from my desk. As a result, in retrospect, it seemed harder to take my job seriously, when I didn’t take myself seriously enough to get “dressed up.”

Starting my job in Hong Kong was a big shock. From where I stand, it seems that the real reason people in finance get paid the big bucks is primarily so that they can afford clothes to wear to work with people who get paid the big(ger) bucks.

Of course, in finance, there were no jeans or shorts or hats or t-shirts or hoodies or flats. Nothing cotton what-so-ever. Even the stuff I owned that I fancied to be fancy wasn’t dressy enough to make the cut. It’s all suits and skirts and stockings, in shiny and smooth fabrics, the stodgier, the stuffier, the better.

Initially, I found it terribly hard to keep up. At the beginning, I spent thousands of dollars in vain (that I didn’t have after the expenses of moving to the other side of the world) because I was desperate to feel like I fit in. Not to mention the additional cost of tailoring, because apparently, even the clothes in Asia aren’t small enough for mini-me.

My solution, my savior, has been silk. I go to open market to buy the fabric, make my own designs or copy simple designs, and take it all to my tailor. Total cost for each piece ranges from USD$50-100. Very reasonable for completely custom clothing for which I’m constantly complimented.

This is me doing more with less.

And winning at it.

Secondly, I’m a writer, not a poet. So, forgive me, if I suck. I’m new, I’m learning, learning to appreciate.

In college, the way I felt about poetry was similar to way my boyfriend currently feels about my deep obsession with The New Yorker magazine.

“What is it saying?” he gripes. “It’s not news, honey,” I pleadingly interject, “It’s just commentary. About news. Sometimes.” He scoffs at this. “But where are the facts!?”

Since I struggle with this in poetry, I’m going to offer an explanation about my poem before I read it. I hope you don’t mind. It’s about how I imagined it would feel to have Alzheimer’s.

Finally, a disclaimer: I am a writer by day, and a poet only by nightmare. I wrote this one in the middle of the night, after a particularly bad dream, and was suprised to find it blinking at me, as I blinked back at the computer screen in the morning after.

I was in a street market, covered by a big white tarp, partitioned off by wares. I was going through a section I hated, because it was the animal section, and they were not kind to animals there.

As I walk through with my head down, I see a beautiful bird, white with colorful wings, out of the corner of my eye. It is flapping its wings, beak outstretched towards the sky, but he can’t fly. His feet are tied up, at the bottom of a big, glass fishbowl, filled with water. He’s not struggling for flight, he’s struggling for life.

There is a man who is in charge of this sick spectacle, and two women watch on in untroubled fascination and breathless excitement. One women wears a bright yellow kaftan, and a matching shawl pulled over her head and face. The other women is blonde and bouncy, filming with her bright and shiny iPhone.

The man brags: “These birds can hold their breath under water for two to three minutes.” And the women ooohh and aaahh, as the bird struggles more strongly, its desperation magnified by the water and distorted by the thick round bowl.

And then the bird drowns to death, weightless in its final flight, its final fight. The women clap, and the man nods emphatically, exuding pride while attempting to project humility.

I come crashing down, crying at the cruelty, can’t stand up to the crushing weight of caustic nature in the world, slowly sensing something inside of me, fly and die, too.

It was a very forward-thinking institution, and was dedicated to culture, intellectualism, and perhaps most, diversity. I knew nothing about racial tension while I was there. With no offense intended or implied, my three best friends were a black, a Jap, and a Jew. But I didn’t know that as a child. They were just my three best friends, in various sizes and shapes and colors.

This school prided itself by raising children as little adults, with a solid sense of self-confidence, which could almost be construed as entitlement, but not in the spoiled, privileged way. Rather, the children all possessed educated opinions and felt free to impart their views, no matter how old they themselves were or how old the other person might be. We grew up knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we had reason to be heard and the right to ask questions. A similar phenomenon is discussed in Malcolm Gladwell’s recent book, Outliers.

Then, in fourth grade, we relocated to Austin, Texas. Suddenly, I was stuck in dim-lit dungeon with old, mean Mrs. Hopper, who had to grant you a frog-shaped laminate cut-out in order to be permitted to the powder room. I had never had to address an adult by their last name before, and I had certainly had never had to have an adult “allow” me to go to the bathroom. I found myself in some sort of alternate universe, where the textbooks were practically primitive, the children were clear subordinates of adults, and where all the faces were white.

On my first day, Mrs. Hopper seated me at desk with a cubby, and proceeded to say to the class with a deep Southern twang: “All right y’all, we’re fixing to do some reading, turn yer books to page 42.” I went home to my mother in outright indignation. How was this woman supposed to teach us English when she can’t even speak it?

Fast forward to my senior year of high school. Well, sort of.

I was merely a tourist. I got fed up with the public school system in sixth grade, and refused to go back. Luckily, my greatly supportive parents allowed me to self-school myself from seventh until tenth grade, when I graduated from high school two years early. I made the decision to go to “real” high school afterward, because it seemed like an important, invaluable bonding experience, that I would need someday around a water cooler.

I took a class with Mr. Martin, who was favorably nick-named by all students and staff as “Doc Martin.” He only taught class at “zero-hour,” which meant getting to school an hour early, before anybody else. And thus proved his popularity; I’m not sure what else could convince a bunch of high school seniors to get out of bed before they had to.

For the first time in my life, I was “Sconyers,” not merely “Melissa.”

Everyone in class learned out to pronounce my name correctly, with the ‘c’ acting as a hard ‘k.’ Doc Martin encouraged us to be opinionated, to be assertive, even to be interruptive. In many ways, I felt like I developed, or at least deepened, a new personna in that class room.

Still, to this day, I feel a bond with those classmates. Now, when we message each other on Facebook every so often, we still address each other by our last names. They’re always be Buckmann, Fann, or Galloway to me. They, too, admit that they’ll always know me in this way, in an almost sheepish manner. After all these years, is it silly to stick to something so subtle?

In college, I had a prim, proper professor who positively could only called by his full, official title (”Dr. Cox”), and I had an alternative, bohemian, feminist professor who insisted on being called by her first name (”Alison,” or “Alliterative Alison,” as per our name game on the first day). A few other of my treasured professors insisted that I call them by their first them after I was no longer in their classes, but I affectionately, purposefully, respectfully continued to call them by what I considered to be their name: Madame Lippmann, Professor Boretz, and Dr. Kushner, a.k.a Dr. K.

This personal preference was only strengthened by my time in China, where “teacher” translates roughly to “old master,” and is a coveted and commanded term of respect. Years after I’m no longer their student, and even though they’ve become friends and fixtures in my life, I’ll never be able to call them by anything else, but Ai Laoshi, Meng Laoshi, Yang Laoshi. Save for one: Camilla.

After I graduated, my first job was at a grand, global, glamorous advertising agency, where I ascertained that ole Doc Martin was right. I transformed into “Sconyers” again, and my colleagues were people like Goldberg, Stout, Clement.

A few days ago, I unintentionally offended somebody by referring to them by their last name only. I didn’t think twice about it, specifically since in my prior positions, it was a clear, formal form of respect to call each other by our last names. I apologized and explained. But it got me thinking.

What’s in a name? I answer to so many names. For me, it provides an acute form of social mapping. Depending on what a person calls me, I immediately know how they came to know me, when they came to know me, and where they came to know me. Usually, I even have an accurate idea how long it’s been since we’ve last talked.

Perhaps this is a type of transformation or transition in culture. It seems similar to the age-old process of going from daughter to mother to grandmother, or from friend to girlfriend to wife.

Names have their place in time, and their time in place.

Every year, it gets more and more difficult to describe the deep feelings of gratitude that I feel towards you. I am grateful, for everything tangible you have given me, yes, but especially for the intangible, the incommunicable, the imperceptible.

I am proud, to be able to hold my own in the elite circles of men. I am honored and humbled to be able to play the games — whether they be backgammon, cribbage, gin, and pool — and the other, more crucial and considerable challenges — of power and persuasion, of networking and negotiation, of debate and diplomacy.

Ultimately, I am amassing, building, crafting, and evolving the life I imagine and desire to live. And achieve to what I aspire: which is to truly be my father’s daughter.

Love,
Melissa

1) We have mail, you know, “snail mail,” which has to physically go to a location and takes “time.”

2) Then we have email, which goes electronically to a location without requiring “time,” only requiring the time between which it arrives and which it gets read.

Then there’s the path of development to Google Buzz.

3) At some point thereafter, we get one-to-one texting (and even, accidentally one-to-more texting, kind of like three-way calling gone way wrong). It is slow and laborious to catch on. I mean, who wants to type out messages on those tiny little keys? (Read: ADULTS.) Yeah, us crazy kids. Well, WE showed them.

4) Along the same time comes chat rooms and instant messaging, where there is no delay, everything is instantaneous and synchronous. Wheeeeee! (Like, OMG, IRL! Hey! Hi! What’s up? Nothing, you? Nothing much. Hmm, A/S/L? 18/F/California. Oooh, wanna cyber? (…Except with a lot more abbreviation and a less capitalization and punctuation. u no?)

5) Facebook, The All Mighty. Where we can all passively expel information about our lives to our “friends,” or shall I say, our “audience,” whoever they might be. These people, on the other end, can passively or aggressively or ignoringly consume your information. Facebook is like a me-to-you relationship, where “you” means everybody you know, have even known, kinda sorta know, or think you maybe might know, but you’re really not sure and you don’t care to verify, because, let’s face it, you like it when your friend count goes up. (Me? I have a pithy 1,927 friends and counting.)

Add me if you’re interesting, intellectual, and/or attractive, and we can eventually slash soon become best internet buddies!!~~@!

5) Yeah, yeah, so somewhere along these lines, we get Twitter, which is sort of like, I’m going to instant message “you,” whereby “you” means, like, the collective you, like the interwebs, like you and everybody I know and everybody you know and everybody else we don’t know. Cool. Look at me. Twitterdeeeeeeeeeee. I’m @melissa. Booya. I’ve got 1,734 followers, and I’ve had 2,448 short, witty bursts of intellectual banter. Much like this one:

Follow me. Then continue reading:

6) Then there is the cultural subtext of the Twitter Direct Message, which is like “you’re more special than the interwebs, so i message you privately, but instead of choosing a relatively more semi-synchronous communication (instant message, facebook message, text message, or *SHOCKHORROR* a phone call), I’ll send the shorter equivalent of an email. (Refer to Point #2)

7) And finally, on the 7th day, GODoogle created Buzz. A way for you, your friends, your family, and EVERYBODY YOU HAVE EVER EMAILED WITH (Like, hey yoooo, sup, you former-potential-craigslist-roomie-who-turned-out-to-be-a-WEIRD-TOTAL-CREEP-and-SMELLY), to have a theoretically no-reply function which is in all actuality a reply-all function, stuffed unceremoniously and randomly into your beloved, ferociously guarded inbox. (Cue theme song: “This is the song that neverrrr endssssss, it goes on and on MY FRIIIIIIIIIENDS…..“

8) There is no number eight. I’m not buzzed about Google Buzz. In fact, I’m not even buzzed. I’m drinking a glass of soy milk on the rocks.

Where’s my telepathy at? I THOUGHT THE FUTURE WAS COMING.

I stopped the first person I saw. It was an unsuspecting 16-year-old girl, who walked about half a mile out of her way to help me buy my train tickets. She was slightly plump, with a round, kind face, and told me she was still in high school. When I asked her what she planned to study in college, she struggled to find words in English. “Lawyer!” she said triumphantly a few long seconds later. I inquired what kind of lawyer, and she replied simply, “Children,” and nodded sharply to punctuate her statement.

Once I had tickets in hand, the girl walked me to the electronic turnstiles, and turned about-face to me, signifying her work here was done. I thanked her several times, bowing my upper-body ever so slightly towards her with each repetition of gratitude. I fumbled with my unwieldy bag to pull out a business card before I walked through. I said sincerely, “If you ever come to America, please let me know,” and her eyes lit up in surprise and delight as she slowly ran her fingers over the thick card stock, carefully examining the fine print.

A train was waiting at the platform, so I stopped a young, well-dressed guy to find out if it was the correct train. Showing him my ticket and pointing at the train, I asked, “This one?” He replied affirmatively in fluent, only-ever-so-slightly accented English, and for a passing moment, I felt very small and silly.

I was relieved to find a seat on the train, and I sat with my head resting to the side against one of the poles. A few minutes later the doors closed and the train started moving. I was staring intently down at my ticket, memorizing the characters, and waiting for them to show up on the screen, when a guy sat down next to me. He sees me studying the ticket, and tells me Yokohama is 13 stops away.

The right characters flashed up on the screen, and I jump up and out. Following instructions, I find some a big escalator and go up them. At the top, I know immediately that I’m not in the right place. There are some shady looking guys standing in the shadows of the corner, hawking brochures of some sort. I innocently ask them where I might find the Disney store where I’m supposed to be meeting my friends.  They point me in a direction, and I walk down an alley in that direction.

Coming out on the other end, there is an enormous lot, filled with rows and rows of taxis parked ten deep, all with their lights on, ready and waiting. The picture is just too good to miss, and I jump on a nearby ledge, and start playing with the shot through my viewfinder.

The outside world ceases to exist as I fiddle with focus points, adjust the exposure, and determine depth-of-field. A shallow man walks by and says, “Excuse me?” followed by something sarcastic in Japanese. His colleagues laugh. I turn around, and he delivers the punchline: “Nice view.” But he’s not talking about the scene I’m capturing. I turn back around without further acknowledging him, and go back to the task at hand. Deciding that I need a wide-angle lens instead, I am in the middle of balancing on this ledge and juggling my heavy camera and two heavy lenses, when another man stops near me.

In fast, broken English he sings out, “Excuse me, ex-coo-sahh me, are you lost?” I open my mouth to reply, but I don’t have an answer. I know I’m lost, but this fact doesn’t concern me in the least. I know I’ll get where I’m going. Eventually.

The persistent man asks again, “Are you loss-taaa? Do you need help?” I pause before hesitantly agreeing, that yes, technically, I am indeed lost. “Where are you going?” When I answer, he just stands there, scratching at the thinning hair on his head in confusion. He starts asking me about Queens, Queens Square, Queens Mall, and I shrug, nonplussed. He indicates my destination is at a different station, and he tells me the name, which is long, multi-syllabic, and starts with an M. I thank him, tell him I will take the train there, and turn away to start fumbling with my camera again, still determined to get my picture.

But the man isn’t reassured. He stays rooted to the ground behind the ledge, deeply concerned that I am completely not concerned about being lost. I start to suspect that he has Tourettes, because even though his English is passable, he beings to interject bursts of incomprehensible Japanese in the middle of sentences and sometimes in the middle of words. He insists that I must go back to the train station where I came from, and explain that I got off at the wrong stop. He is now very emphatic about the fact I’m at the wrong stop, trying very hard to convey the fact I am wrong and this stop is wrong. I assume he’s trying to tell me how to get back in without buying another ticket, so in a moment of sensibility, I reluctantly lower my camera from its poised position and ask him nicely if he could help me with this, since he speaks Japanese and I, obviously, do not.

His reaction is strange, and he startles me by waving his hands and quickly backing a few steps away from me. “Oh, no, no, noooo, I cannot do that, cannot accompany you.” I thank him, again, more firmly this time, and turn around, again, to finish taking the damn picture. He stands for a little while, watching me, unsure of what to do with this lost girl who is completely, inconceivably unconcerned with being lost.

He stays until i jump off the ledge and start walking towards the station. He walks off in the other direction, seemingly satisfied that I am finally going to do something about this being lost business. I think he’s gone his way, but a few seconds later, I hear the stochastic sound of dress shoes on pavement, as he runs back up to me, holding out a magazine in front of him, as an offering of, well, I’m not sure what. I look at it blankly, and my arms stay by my side. “I’s in English language. For you.” I take it him, thank him for the last time, and go along my way. This time, he doesn’t move until he ensures that I’ve gone back into the station to find my way, like any sane person would do when they’re lost.

When i finally do arrive where I am supposed to be, I see the “big escalator” they told me about. This escalator is so large and so long, that the children of the mother who is standing behind me actually sit down on the moving steps, making themselves comfortable as they wait patiently, tiredly to reach the top.

Though I’ve arrived at my destination, I can’t seem to find my friends. So I step outside out onto the balcony, which overlooks the waterfront and a collection of small, old fashioned, brightly neon-lit carnival rides. I find another ledge, nimbly hop onto it, and begin taking pictures. Completely content to be exactly where I am at that exact moment in time.

I waved down an empty cab, and the friendly middle-aged man smiled widely. He impressed me by he pressing a button that automatically opened the rear passenger door. After laboriously pulling my baggage and myself into the car, I showed him the English name of the hotel. He repeated the name out loud a few times, transliterating it into Japanese. “Met-sa ho-tel-a.” He repeated it again, elongating each syllables as he sat deep in thought, quietly questioning if he knew the location. “Met-saaa ho-telll-aaaa?”

He pulled forward, asking a traffic controller a few questions in rapid-fire Japanese. After a few minutes, he merged into traffic and we were on our way. Turns out, the hotel was very close, but hard to find. We drove around the block a few times until we found it. I gave him 1250 yen, or about thirteen dollars, and thanked him profusely.

The following day, I set out to find a MUJI store that was fairly close to where I was staying, or so I had gathered from my online research. In the lobby of the hotel, I asked the receptionist to write down the address, so that I could take a taxi there. She seemed surprised that I wanted to take a taxi, and then seemed sorry for her surprise, shyly saying that it was “only maybe 15 minutes by walking.” She gave me a bad map with worse directions, and off I went.

I was lost practically before I even begun, and stopped somebody on the street right outside the hotel. He pointed me in the right direction.

After walking for awhile, I cornered a couple for further help. At this point, I realized I had forgotten to get the receptionist to write MUJI down in Japanese. I tried various pronunciations of the word. “Moooojii? Mewwwjiii,” I mused out loud. Finally, a spark of recognition crossed the couple’s faces, and they said, “Oh! MUJI!” I smiled at my success and nodded emphatically. The man put his hand on his chin, and then asked, “You mean, no name quality goods.” Yes. Exactly what I was looking for.

A few minutes of directional hand-waving later, I was on my way again.

I was told to cross a few intersections, and then turn right at the big intersection. The second or third intersection was fairly large, so I started to wonder if I would know which intersection was the “big intersection.” Then I happened upon what I later learned was called Hachiko Crossing, and realized there was no way I could have missed it.

It was quite possibly the biggest, busiest intersection I ever seen. And unlike China, these people were all waiting patiently. Nobody jaywalked, not even a single person. There wasn’t even jostling at the front lines, but I found a place out of trampling distance anyway, standing rooted to the ground in awe. When the walk light lit up, people poured onto the street.

With a lamp pole at my back, I contemplated what “turn right” even meant. There were no less than five different corners at this intersection. I watched several the lights change several times, before I spotted a gaijin, a foreigner, on my left. I turned to him and asked if he knew where I could find the nearby MUJI.  He furrowed his brow as he read some of the Japanese on my map aloud. At this exact moment, the walk light turned green again, and we were swept up and across along with the massive masses who were moving. He chatted idly with me as he led me, and I found out he was from Philly. As we parted ways I was left standing in front of LoFT, which I explored before continuing in my quest to find MUJI.

By this point, I had taken no less than 27 wrong turns. I was getting overheated from wearing too much clothing as the temperature of the day continued to rise. I was feeling tired from carrying my ten-pound camera around my neck and walking for miles wearing four-inch high heeled boots. I had been lost for hours, and the familiar feeling of anxiety was starting to well up in my chest.

Then I stopped in my tracks. I wasn’t lost. I simply had nowhere to go except exactly where ever I wanted to go. And I was enjoying the journey immensely.

First dates are completely, totally, and inexcusably obsolete. There is just no good reason for them to exist any longer.

Join me, my friends, in the quest to eliminate first dates forever. I am hereby refusing to ever go on a first date again.

And it’s not because I’m condemning myself to a life of isolation and celibacy. No, no. It’s just that I don’t want to ever again be in the awkward position of staring at the stranger in front of me and trying desperately to find something, anything, to talk to them about.

Think about the concept behind the word “relationship.” A relationship, of any kind, fundamentally can’t exist without something on which to relate.

That’s why you need context. To find out how to effectively achieve this, everybody should turn to us, the Facebook generation, and take an important lesson.

We wouldn’t go out with somebody before first checking out their interests to make sure we don’t have film or literary tastes that will direly clash, or you know, disagree about trite, trivial things like religion or politics. We wouldn’t agree to being confined to a dinner table with someone without cruising through their news feed to make sure they aren’t going to bore you to death by the time dessert arrives. And we definitely wouldn’t agree to a date before carefully examining each and every one of their 1,827 photos to extract hidden clues about their personality.

It’s just not efficient to sit around and tell your entire life story anymore. Not that it ever was, but there is certainly no excuse for it now. We invest an enormous amount of time, painstakingly documenting and sharing the stories and images of our lives online. A potential date should want to take a little bit of time to absorb all of that in advance, so that neither of you waste any time on something that wasn’t ever going to work out.

Sure, there will always still be a “first date,” but it won’t feel the same. You’ll be able to relate to each other already, because you’re starting out at a higher level. (That is, of course, assuming they still want to go out with you after finding you on Facebook. They could determine that you’re a total weirdo.)

So, next time, instead of giving somebody your number, give them your name and networks. Let them get to know you. Digitally.

Just don’t forget to look through their album of Profile Pictures. You can learn a lot about a person from the photos they choose as their Profile Pictures.

So, you have to take notes.

I do believe that writing is something you need to set time aside for, but in order to succeed at it, you need to have a resource for finding something to write about. A method for figuring out your topic.

Personally, I do this by referencing a document called Topics, which is essentially a long collection of random statements, thoughts, phrases, and half-finished sentences that represent some larger idea that I have not yet found the time to write about. These fringe-thoughts are important to capture.

However, the content for my Topics documents has to come from somewhere. It’s actually just a compilation of all the notes I take. The best way to start putting together your own Topics document is to start writing down your ideas when you have them, instead of waiting until you actually have time to do something with them.

A few days ago, I Twittered that as much as I’d love to carry around a Moleskine to jot down ideas in style, I just can’t keep up with a notebook. Besides my wallet and keys, the only thing I can keep track of is my iPhone. So, I am always using it as my nerdy scratchpad.

I once read that Jerry Seinfeld keeps a notepad on the dresser next to his bed, because concepts for comedy frequently come to him in the middle of the night when he’s dead asleep. His notes don’t always make sense when he reads them with fresh eyes in the morning, but when they do, they’re always valuable material.

I have similar experiences. Oftentimes, ideas for essays come to me just as I’m drifting off to sleep. But of course, by that time, I’m too tired to get up, find a notebook, locate a pen, and laboriously write down the idea. And forget about getting back to sleep once I do all of that.

Fortunately, I sleep with my iPhone tucked under my pillow. So, it’s easy to just pull it out, open up Notes, and tap-tap-tap out whatever interesting thing I might be thinking about.

In fact, the iPhone has completely changed the way I approach writing, because my iPhone is literally never more than three feet away from me. I always have a way to record my thoughts, so the time at which I have these thoughts is now irrelevant. Because even when I’m in the shower, my iPhone always within the reach of my arm. (As long as I towel-dry my arm first.)

In an alternate universe, where I could actually succeed at carrying around a notebook, I still wouldn’t have it with me when, say, I’m standing naked in my bathroom and blowdrying my hair.

But I do have my iPhone. Which is exactly why I remembered to write this post.